Your source for indispensable Apple and Macintosh news, reviews, tips, and commentary since 1990.

 

Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?

If your Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) system is unexpectedly sluggish, logging might be the culprit. Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/ folder), and click the CPU column twice to get it to show most to least activity. If syslogd is at the top of the list, there's a fix. Syslogd tracks informational messages produced by software and writes them to the asl.db, a file in your Unix /var/log/ directory. It's a known problem that syslogd can run amok. There's a fix: deleting the asl.db file.

Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd

sudo rm /var/log/asl.db

sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.

Visit Discussion of syslogd problem at Smarticus

 
 

LaserWriter Edges Up to 8.5.1

Apple's recent release of LaserWriter 8.5.1 may not appeal to all users, but promises to catch the eyes of publishing professionals. Among a handful of features, the new version supports printing over IP-only networks via the LPR protocol, but with a caveat: only Mac OS versions 7.5 through 7.6.1 will work; Mac OS 8 users must wait for the next revision to the system software. The same limitation applies to a new Collate feature, and Desktop Printer Utility version 1.0, included in the update. Also present in the LaserWriter update is support for custom page sizes, improved ColorSync integration, and the addition of Adobe Acrobat PDF in the Save-As-File panel (you must have a full version of Acrobat 3.0 to take full advantage of the feature). The download consists of six disk images; you'll need DiskCopy 6.1 or ShrinkWrap 3.0 to mount them and install the software.

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